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Saturday, March 26, 2016

How our bias toward the future can cloud our moral judgment

By Agnieszka JaroslawskaThe Conversation
Originally published March 7, 2016

Here are two excerpts:

It may seem illogical, but research has confirmed that people have markedly different reactions to misdemeanours that have already happened to those that are going to happen in the future. We tend to judge future crimes to be more deliberate, less moral, and more deserving of punishment than equivalent transgressions in the past. Technically speaking, we exhibit “temporal asymmetries” in moral judgements.

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Research suggests that people rely on their emotions when making judgements of fairness and morality. When emotions run high, judgements are more extreme than when reactions are weak.